Brontë Parsonage Museum Receives £20,000 Gift From T.S. Eliot Estate

At the New York Times, Sarah Bahr shares news that the struggling Brontë Parsonage Museum has received a £20,00 gift from the T.S. Eliot Estate, to help it stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. Bahr notes that "the Eliot estate’s gift didn’t come with any fanfare: Rebecca Yorke, the head of communications and marketing at the Brontë Society, said she discovered the donation when it showed up on the museum’s crowdfunding campaign page with a message of support. 'Realizing that it was from the T.S. Eliot estate was a very special moment,' she said." More: 

Yorke said the Eliot estate told the organization that the donation was possible thanks to the success of the Tony-winning Andrew Lloyd Webber musical “Cats,” which is based on Eliot’s playful 1939 poetry collection “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”

The parsonage houses the largest collection of Brontë manuscripts and personal possessions in the world and attracts more than 70,000 visitors each year. “Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Brontë, and “Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë, were both written there.

The museum has been hard hit by the pandemic because more than 70 percent of the Brontë Society’s income comes from admissions, events and retail, according to its website. The typically busy spring and summer months normally sustain it through the slower winter season.

Read more at the New York Times.